


hemming

by requiodile



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, F/M, Horror, M/M, merfolk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:12:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/requiodile/pseuds/requiodile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do not spread lies, they say. The merfolk will hear, and when you frolic under the moon by the sea like the naughty children you are, they will take you unto their embraces, and they will feast upon your flesh, for the wine of deceits is ever so sweet to the creatures that sing you to sleep, in their cities of sea-ice and bone. </p><p>You listen, and listen carefully, they warn, listen to the whistling of the caves on the far shore, listen to the murmur at the edge of the shallow tide, and heed not their honeyed words—make their falsehoods to be your lullaby, and slumber by the hearth until morn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hemming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inver/gifts), [Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/gifts).



> Disclaimer: The pace of my writing is brutally slow, but hey, if it means that all this slow churning leads to a smoother, richer, more sinful product, I hope you don't mind. Stick around a bit, be patient with me; I assure you, your wait will be rewarded, in time.
> 
> And by you, I mean all of you people who've clicked on this title and deigned to read this fic of mine. In truth, it's not mine; it's the lovely Hadeshorn's, for without her inspirational artwork ( http://hadeshorn.tumblr.com/post/23596878049/did-anyone-say-the-little-mer-loki-no-well-i ), I would have never begun this arduous journey at all (hades i love you). And of course, Clairicechiarasorcha, who I strongly feel needs far more adoration than she thinks she deserves. GO FORTH AND LOVE HER.
> 
> Anyway, I needed to post this chapter here, although it's been finished for a couple of weeks; need to motivate myself, y'know? Also, I haven't posted any of my work here before--it would be nice to get some feedback from a broader array of readers.
> 
> There will be gore, incest, unintentional necrophilia, murder, self-mutilation, bestiality, madness, and love--but love can never be without heartbreak, and you'll have plenty of that. 
> 
> I will warn for such things as they occur in further chapters; as a further note, there are a few characters created for the sole purpose of this story, one of whom happens to be extremely important--oh, don't let that dissuade you! But perhaps you would have liked a heads-up before jumping in.
> 
> Enjoy.

>>>

The sea roils, and Thor awakes, alone. 

He’s alone save for his young son, who blinks at him with eyes the exact color of a sky that the boy’s never seen; this far north, if their humble fishing village isn’t smothered in fog, then the iron-grey clouds twist and rumble and weep above them.

“Father,” Eyvindr begins, and Thor doesn’t bother to listen to the rest. His son is of the age to learn the trade of every man who has ever been born on the shores of these frigid waters, but Thor desperately desires his firstborn to have nothing to do with the reek of fresh oil, the spill of blood over the unfathomable depths—he cannot bear the thought of the sting of salt upon that tender, pale face.

His son’s hair twists in waves of charcoal and tar, like his mother’s. Thor swallows. “Sif shall never forgive us, if she awakens to find both father and son gone from their beds, with the hay cold and the door ajar.” His tongue is thick in his mouth from sleep, and he reaches blindly for the waterskin that hangs upon Eyvindr’s belt—such mornings have become routine between Thor and his son; like usual, Eyvindr has filled the skin with mead, and the burn is sweet upon his throat.

“The door is not ajar,” Eyvindr insists. “I closed it.”

Thor staggers aft, and tumbles off of the stern to land on the sand; his chosen vessel for the night had been moored halfway up the beach. “Let us check, and I shall prove your folly,” Thor blearily jests, and his son, his pearl, scowls and bolts away, back to the longhouse. 

Indeed, the door swings and squeaks in greeting at their arrival, Eyvindr outpacing his father in time to slam it shut and shake the entire structure. Thor marvels at his strength—so strong, for one so young—and flinches at the resulting wail of his daughters from inside. 

Eyvindr, too, quails; Sif is as fierce by the hearth as she is on the sea, and his apprehension is not ill-founded. The moment the door reopens, Sif thrusts the howling twins into Eyvindr’s arms and points him in the direction of the table, where the girls’ morning porridge awaits.

Thor masks his relief underneath a veneer of sympathetic dismay when Eyvindr shoots him a desperate glance for help over his shoulder from the stool, breakfast already all over his face and a stray foot digging into the jutting collarbone revealed by the slip of a too-large tunic. The sight of such a familiar feature draws forth a faint ache within his gut, and Thor ignores it in favor of turning away from his children to land a kiss upon the cheek of his wife. It is better that his son’s punishment rest by the hearthfire than by the nets in need of detangling outside. 

“Begone from me,” Sif gripes, but ladles him a meal nonetheless. 

She is beautiful, in the way that the jagged cliffs prove themselves to be, on those rare days when the fog blows clear and the sea is calm. It has been a decade since they have wed, and yet the gloss of her sleek otter’s-pelt hair and the lines of her body endure the unceasing waters which batter the shore, the tumble of perpetual mist and rain upon this bleak land.

For her, for Sif, Thor indeed bears great love and affection. But it bears not too deeply in thought; Thor, along with most other men, is too busy tending to the ships in preparation for the difficult ventures upon the sea. He has no pain to spare for such musings. 

Such pain is saved for the journey; not once does Thor stray on deck, choosing to row in the dim, in the damp, with the force of a hundred men in his arms, rather than to face the open ocean in all of her anguish and glory.

Such anguish! And yet Thor cannot pull away from her splendors, her horrors.

The sea has taken from him, and she has given, but never returned. The sacrifice has become too high to leave; to uptake any other profession, any other means of life elsewhere, would be to shame those whom the sea has taken for her keeping.

For Thor, the shadow of those gone haunt the sands and float upon the crest of each wave—they dog his steps and snap at not only his heels, but those of his mother, his father, and his son.

Frigga has never quite recovered from the loss of Baldr, the Beloved. Not one has, in truth. 

For the children of the village, the tale of Baldr is only proof of their bedtime tales, only proof that naughty children who venture out onto the far rocks after dark do indeed get snatched away into the bleaker blackness, never to return. Only proof, they say to each other, and cling to their mothers on stormy nights and dare not to creep from their beds to play in the moonlit sands by the boats.

The tale of Loki is less commonly heard; it is the stuff of scandalous childhood gossip, the story that the children tell when they think their parents cannot hear. Any parent, of course, would dissuade them from sharing such a story—such things are not stories, they scold, but lies.

Do not spread lies, they say. The merfolk will hear, and when you frolic under the moon by the sea like the naughty children you are, they will take you unto their embraces, and they will feast upon your flesh, for the wine of deceits is ever so sweet to the creatures that sing you to sleep, in their cities of sea-ice and bone. 

You listen, and listen carefully, they warn, listen to the whistling of the caves on the far shore, listen to the murmur at the edge of the shallow tide, and heed not their honeyed words—make their falsehoods to be your lullaby, and slumber by the hearth until morn.

Thor is no longer a child, and yet, it is only he who feels the rounded pebbles under his bare feet, only he who steps through the frigid caresses that the water’s edge offers, only he who stands and watches the stars fade and flicker and burn.

It is only ever perfectly clear at night.

>>>

It is less than a month before the upcoming fishing trip, when Eyvindr dashes to his father’s side and declares that a stranger has arrived, one with strange piercing eyes and feathers growing out of his hair.

Rising from the crouch he had resolutely maintained for the majority of the morning, Thor stares at his son, and then stares at the small cloth bundle held between his child’s slender fingers. “A stranger, you say.” 

The wind has blown Eyvindr’s mane into a matted snarl at the nape of his neck, despite the neat braid it had been in a scant hour before. Thor pats the sawdust from his hands before pulling a stray stalk of grass out of Eyvindr’s forelock; it is for Sif’s convenience that he does so, for by the end of the day, a veritable nest will form in his son’s hair, harboring the fanciful creatures that sprout forth in the mind of every precociously inquisitive child.

“He asked to see Grandfather, so I showed him Grandfather’s house. And, and he gave me this, is it from a faraway land? It is pretty…“ Eyvindr shifts the wrapped object from hand to hand, and an impossible glimpse of sunlight flashes from a small rip in the ragged fabric; all the men stop their work on the unfinished sea-craft to catch a better look, exclaiming as the cloth pulls away—

Thor strikes the coronet from Eyvindr’s hands the moment he recognizes the metalwork—it is a dagger-narrow band of beaten gold, inset with pearls and fragments of mother-of-pearl cut like eyes, bearing barbed barnacle tines along the top rim and delicate gold chains threaded through with sea urchin spines dangling along the bottom edge; the grooved pattern along both the interior and exterior of the coronet twists in oceanic mimicry of arboreal grains, spiraling into the delicate whorls shaped about each iridescent insertion. 

It is heartbreakingly beautiful, and draws forth such despair in Thor that he hardly feels the tines cut into his palm with the force of his blow.

Tyr, the One-Handed, sees it for what it is as well, and curses profusely; he drops the bucket of tar from his only remaining hand, which diverts the attention of the men and sets off another round of blasphemies to ring about the partially completed hull.

Up on the quarter-done deck, Eyvindr trembles in honest confusion and pain—never before has Thor struck his firstborn, and the pinched expression upon Eyvindr’s face tears something asunder within him, such that Thor clasps his son’s shoulder in a sudden, desperate desire to keep him close. 

“It was not you towards whom I bear such grievance,” Thor chokes out, “I am not hateful of you, I shall never be hateful of you, or anything of you.”

Eyvindr goes stiff under his grip and gulps. The frosted blue gaze has gone dark with uncertainty and hurt, and set in that angular, pale face, the sudden resemblance to a long-lost visage is jarring, especially given the circumstances—Thor quickly pulls off his own weather-beaten cloak and drops to his knees, tucking it about Eyvindr’s shoulders whilst blocking off the view of his son’s face from the other men, from Tyr in particular. Such men require little provocation to recall memories best left to the sunken ashes. 

But, such a face his pearl bears, his firstborn, his blessing, suddenly so akin to one dearly mislaid that Thor nearly retches from the void it leaves in him. There is a little crease that appears upon Eyvindr’s brow at his father’s actions; it too is no different, and Thor reaches upwards with a thumb to smooth it out. His son is too young yet to carry the lines of worry and heartache upon his features.

“Accept this, instead, as protection from suffering, and from the forces that seek to undo us,” Thor says, and heeds not the drops of his blood upon the wood—one, two, three. 

There is most certainly more blood where he grips the cloak about Eyvindr’s shoulders, but it is of no particular worry; salt and filth and time have worn the previously crimson fabric darker than the liquid that now seeps into the threads. It feels like an additional safeguard of sorts, another ward of earth against the lure of sea.

Eyvindr clutches the cloak with trepidation, but the wounded bewilderment he exudes dwindles, being slowly replaced with the beginnings of disbelieving wonder. “A-a protection?” he falters, and sneaks a peek at the coronet, lying forlorn upon the raw wood. “From something so lovely?”

He catches on quick, this one. 

“Aye, and such a cursed thing must be thrown back into the sea, from whence it came.”

Thor watches as his son spares a brief moment to pout at the forthcoming loss of the coronet into the currents of the deep. According to his grandmother, Eyvindr has always borne a magpie’s eyes, drawn to shine and shimmer—the coronet is a treasure indeed, but not one that Thor cares for Eyvindr to cherish.

To secure the cloak more permanently, Thor takes a corner in each hand and knots it under Eyvindr’s chin; a mere ten summers, the boy is dwarfed by its length and inspects it intently as Thor rises to his feet and rewraps the coronet, tucking it away into the satchel resting upon his hip.

“When I return from this voyage,” Thor promises, “I shall request after the pressing needs of our people, and perhaps travel forth to the town to purchase them; you are of age, now, to see the roads beyond our home. It is a journey both long and harrowing.” 

Face instantly alit with joyous anticipation, Eyvindr scrambles eagerly about the deck, only to trip magnificently upon his newly secondhand cloak and tumble right over the edge of the boat—a short grunt from the sands below liberate the passage of breath into Thor’s chest as he cracks the young wood under his hands, hands which were too slow to snatch his son away from the far edge and into the security of his arms.

An unfamiliar man lowers Eyvindr to the ground, and stretches with a quick pop and snap of his neck; the movements are jerky, erratic, and brutally efficient.

“Stranger,” Eyvindr greets, “I thank you for the convenience of your person beneath mine.”

Ah, Thor sights now the curls of tawny down away from the man’s neck, the faint glow of his near-amber eyes. 

In profile, the rugged crags that shape his brow and nose and lips form not the face of a man but that of a predator, of the kind that spiral with the wind and shatter the surface of the mirrored clouds with each dive for nourishment. The bow and quiver at his back are much the same; built for power and grace, a harsh magnificence results from the culmination of the two.

“Take care in your words,” the hunter says—for there is nothing else such a man could be—with dry mirth. “For it is better that speak so after you have paid your coin after a night spent in a heated bed, rather than after you have experienced the fortune of an unconventional cushion to soft your fall.”

“Tell him not of your lascivious exploits, good friend,” Thor calls, and joins them with a leap from above. “Surely, you have plentiful tales with which to regale; leave him his youth yet.” 

The hunter speaks with precision, yet his voice is one graveled by hardship. “And yet, the youth here are already familiar with the tales I have to tell, are they not?” He inclines his neck at the bulge of the coronet resting in Thor’s satchel. “Tales of wondrous things, crafted by horror and abomination.”

Thor not quite aware of the state of his mien; surely, it would explain the growing fear visible upon his firstborn’s, fear for his father’s state. “I have no other exploits to tell of but those,” the hunter continues. “I make it not my leisure to gather accounts that pertain not to my trade.”

He grants quick nod to Eyvindr, an affirmation. “I have spoken to the leader of this village, your grandsire, whom I presume to be your sire—“

A nod to Thor, and Thor cannot move, such is the turmoil surging in the pit of his gut, the sudden dread which splinters into his breast in the manner of the frost which forms in the faint crevices of the most formidable boulders. 

“—and we have reached an agreement; the merfolk, they hunt when you hunt, and when you depart, I shall travel alongside you, for what better way to catch my prey than to secret myself amongst theirs?”

The silence that pervades between them is soon broken by a chirp of, “None, as I perceive,” from Eyvindr, who beams at the quirk of a smile he receives for his sincerity.

“A lad that goes for the heart,” the hunter chuckles, “grants a swift end to all his pursuits.” From the pack slung over his shoulder, he pulls forth another prize; this time, it is not a golden bauble, but rather a section of gnarled horn, irregularly crooked like that of an ill-bred ram.

It glimmers, vaguely pearlescent, under Eyvindr’s rapt gaze, the ridges and furrows of the bone resembling nothing more than the arbitrary weathering of a twisted branch borne across the waters from some frigid and distant land.

But oh, it is so much more than simply a horn. A great drought curls, smothering Thor in its languidness under his tongue, and gouges so deeply into the muscle that it spasms, thick and unresponsive, as the hunter adeptly crafts a rousing account of a hunt far-gone, of icicle-needle teeth and bone-spurred fins, of the infamously impenetrable sapphire hide, deceiving in its apparent delicacy and exquisite design.

“Squall-lovers they are, taking great pleasure in the cries of men at the crash of sea-ice and thunder; no sweeter notes in all the world are perceived as when their mother-ocean scatters their prey to the highest winds and darkest depths, and they serenade their prey into their eternal embrace.” 

For emphasis, the hunter kneels and swats the sand with great violence; the crystalline grains flee in abrasive flurries from his palm, coming to rest far from their initial bed of inertia.

Eyvindr scrubs at his eyes from the sudden grit, but observes the hunter with endless fascination through the indistinct sheen of tears. An abrupt comprehension lurches Thor out of his tortured stupor—he has seen such a development before; the first stirrings of curiosity, he knows, whilst innocent in formation, lead soon to speculation, to suspicion, to doubt.

The pursuit of truth, Thor knows, is a quest fraught with abhorrent falsehoods, through a land marked with rivers bearing regret upon their banks and boughs hung heavy with bitterness. With this, he is far more intimate than he has never desired to be. Such a wretched fate he wishes not upon his son, and yet he sights already the queries half-birthed within the shine of Eyvindr’s star-bright eyes, the frankness of his slightly parted lips, the rounded curve of his jaw, slack and smooth still with the soft fat of a mere babe.

“Indeed,” Thor inserts, his words departing with a gravity unlike his usual dour exuberance. “They rise from their beds of pearl and shell, with embraces bearing a cold that reaches so deeply into the marrow that the blood thickens in the manner of milk to butter.” 

His son turns to him, aghast. “Butter?” He cries, and tentatively kneads one of his soft palms with his other hand. The flesh is pliant under his touch, tender with youth—Eyvindr, so delicate in feature and disposition, would be a most assured delicacy, but such frank truths are not of the sort that Thor would choose to reassure his child.

The hunter catches Thor’s eye, and flashes a hint of snow-white teeth in understanding—his grisly tales shall be saved for another time, to share with the other men by the fire. 

He quickly picks up where Thor left off, chuckling, “Aye, lad. Butter, so thick and firm that men perish in such unflattering ways as thus!” 

Eyvindr bursts into uncertain giggles as the hunter reaches out to pose the boy’s arms and pull at his face; Thor is strangely reassured to discern hints of discomfort in his son’s expression—such amusements have begun to frighten rather than fascinate, and it is with great ease that Thor clasps Eyvindr to his side after the boy has had enough of this posturing, and tucks his dark head into the side of Thor’s thigh.

The coronet rests like a drowned man hung upon his belt, and Thor forces the remainder of the knot from his throat to say, “It is a stroke of strange circumstance, hunter, that you have come. It has been long since any have dared to pursue those whom you claim to be your prey in earnest; it has been even longer since any of the merfolk have appeared at our shores at all.”

“Ah, you say this in the manner of a man who believes that my talents are unnecessary, when your own sire has informed me otherwise—“ The hunter remarks, the faint glint of play gone from his iron-sharp gaze. 

It has been longer still since Thor has felt the blooded tremor of belligerence prickle under his skin, a sensation he desires not, an awareness which he has sworn unto himself to never again follow to the logical end. “—And you reply in the manner of a man who believes that he has been slighted, a man who by my unintention has been slighted,” Thor remarks, adeptly stifling the burgeoning flames under well-scorched panes of stone and mud. 

“I merely wonder at the sudden arrival of a man such as yourself at this locale at this time, when not one man has been lost to these hungry waters during ten years past to this very day. The waves themselves have borne no trace of their voracious children, not even at the farthest northern shores, where the moon rises and sets without the aid of the sun.” 

“So, you still assert that I should not have come—“

“No, no,” Thor blurts. “It is, ah, an excellent precaution to have your presence upon the voyage. There may be merfolk that we, as mortal men, have not been able to discern, secreting themselves as they do beneath floes of ice and frosted crests; your talents are indeed necessary, as none here can see as sharply as you, good hunter.”

There is a distinct awareness of something settling; the hunter blinks, appeased, and suddenly shudders from the shoulders down—his body ripples, and immediately, he appears sleeker, smoother, although his worn, patched garb has changed not. Eyvindr openly stares in astonishment, and begins to creep out from behind his father’s leg, emboldened by damned curiosity once more.

“Stranger, how so—“ Thor claps a hand over his son’s mouth, and firmly pulls him back to sit on a nearby rock.

“You are weary from your travels,” Thor states, once Eyvindr is sulkily situated upon the irregularly eroded granite. The hunter shrugs, briefly. “Sup with us, with I and the other men working on the longboat,” Thor offers. “It would be a greatly welcomed reprieve from our labor, to have such a traveled man share in our midday meal.”

And that, it seems, renews the mild amusement upon the hunter’s face. “A greatly welcomed reprieve for me, from my distant travels, as I perceive your current intention.” He steps forward, and with a gruff nod, extends the callused claw he has for a hand to Thor. “It is custom in most lands to know with whom you dine; to those with whom I bear acquaintance, I am known as Clint, only occasionally from Barton, as it is not with frequency that I depart for my ventures from the place of my birth.”

“It is good to be considered as one bearing your acquaintance, Clint of Only Occasionally Barton.” Thor clasps Clint’s hand and returns the hearty shake. “You see before you the humble Thor, son of Odin. And my firstborn, Eyvindr, son of—well, I should hope he is mine,” Thor quips, and it is with much laughter that Clint returns his humor.

“Odinson, Thorson; I shall keep this day held to my breast like that of a fair maiden clutching the token of her young lover gone off to some war in the far north.” 

“But, we are already in the north,” Eyvindr exclaims, fidgeting inconsolably upon his rock; Clint grins broadly at how Eyvindr’s bare feet swing to-and-fro, at how there is now a massive, tangled mess off the side of his head where clever fingers have sent themselves on expedition. “And you are neither a maiden, nor fair!”

“Ach! A lad that goes for the pride,” Clint grumbles, “is granted a swift end by all his pursuits.” He says so without any trace of actual exasperation in his voice; rather, his tone is fond, even longing. “Such a troublesome boy surely must inspire a great ferocity in his sire; indeed, it takes a vigilant man to ensure that his offspring does not venture into waters too turbulent for his ability.”

It is true, perhaps exceedingly so. There has never been a moderate ease by which Thor has performed any action, being both utterly disinterested and overzealous in the same instance—it has caused him many a frustration in his youth, and despite the jaded wisdom of his years, Thor struggles yet; he knows so, and it wearies him.

The faint crunch of the pebbles along the shore draws Thor out of his reverie, and Clint tilts his head appreciatively at the woman who approaches them. “Never shall such a doting man the likes of my husband twice walk these sands, for Thor loves more deeply than all who ever will be,” Sif says, staring Clint down until she nods in quick approval of his well-cared-for equipment and cragged physique. “Our son is indeed one that requires a good deal of protection and a keen eye—it is often that we extricate him from a situation entirely of his own devising and folly.”

She does not have the twins straggling somewhere behind her, so little Magnhildr and Ragnhildr must be with Frigga—Thor makes a note to visit his mother later; she has grown frail from a body weakened by age and a heart broken by tragedy, and even with all of her nurturing strength, the girls are rambunctious at best. It cannot be long that she watches them before she tires.

Sif walks forward to sit with Eyvindr upon the rock, and begins the meticulous task of untangling his hair, once more. “Good hunter, after you have supped with the men of our village, I invite you to dine in our home, for clearly my son has granted you a shine of sorts within his eyes, and I as well am intrigued by your experiences.”

“I gladly accept your request,” Clint replies. “For it is with great pleasure that I made my acquaintances with your husband and your son.”

“And I would see that you become as familiar with the rest of our family, if you have found my two menfolk so favorable to your company.”

“With certainty; ah, take not disfavor at my observation, but I have noticed that your hands bear the marks indicative of experienced swordsmanship—you once were a warrior?”

“I would have you know that a warrior I was, and I warrior I shall always remain! See here, these marks are not of the faded ilk a warrior of established repose would bear; and you dare claim to be ‘keen-of-eye’?”

Thor excuses himself back to his work to let Sif and Clint fiercely debate the finer points of combative technique, making his leave as his wife argues regarding the practical use of a bow as hand-to-hand weapon, and the hunter demonstrates a blindingly swift, complicated maneuver in response, to Eyvindr’s avid delight.

He returns to his sanding, drowning his son’s laughter in the monotonous scrape of stone against wood, skitch-scatch-skitch-scatch—and yet, the peals ring through the rhythm of his drudgery, and Thor finds himself working to the tune of his pearl’s voice, his beauty born of the sea.

>>>

Long after the evening meal, long after Eyvindr has curled up by the dying hearth and the hunter made his sleeping perch upon a stool, long after the twins have gone to bed, long after the plates have been stacked and the food packed away, long after Sif has kissed him tenderly upon his bristly cheek and departed for their room, Thor makes his way down to the beach, alone.

In his hand, the coronet shines like the sun, although illuminated by nothing more than the reflection of the moon off of the beaten gold, by nothing more than the argentine light glimmering off of the rolling waves at his feet. 

There is no one else outside. No one is ever outside, save for Thor. Not when the world is velvet above and obsidian below. 

He walks to the jagged rocks bordering one side of the village’s little bay, and deftly slides his way to the furthest point; so far that there is no other stone between Thor and unfathomable depths.

The barnacles which make his foothold dig into the soles of his boots—they are worn thin, and the early autumn chill nips at the exposed skin of his face, biting at the tender flesh of his neck, cruel where blood still seeps from his palm. The merfolk awaken at the first inklings of frost; Thor, as does any other villager, knows that they sleep through spring and summer—they slumber, serpentine and sapphire, coiled in their palaces of shell and basalt—where the nethermost sands roll in folds of bone-silk, and the torpid current, so frigid that it flows not at all, settles upon them in the manner of a mother swaddling her children.

The wind burns, faintly, and Thor reaches up to trace the edges of a narrow scar that runs along the back of his neck, hidden by the fall of his harvest-gilt mane. Of all his marks, it alone ripples icy at his touch.

Yet, the coronet remains warm, cradled in his hands. With the sea brushing her misted tears into his hair and clothing, Thor turns it over and over and over, slicing his palms into ribbons with the barbed tines and dangling spines.

The blood is lost into the water, drops of one, two, three, Thor’s life-copper trickling into the exquisite etching until the coronet glistens claret under his scrutiny.

One, two, three, and his lips press, brief, against an outermost inlay of mother-of-pearl, the one that flashes most in verdant mercury. The taste is bitter upon his tongue, and the tang of salt is unsympathetic in the scorch that it gives to his chapped skin.

“Seek me not,” Thor whispers, the northern wind snatching his words away before they crawl up from his throat, leaving his plea devoid of resonance and echo. “Come not to the sun, nor to these shores, not until the ice has crept to these very stones, until no man dares the fire of the frore at noon.”

He swings his arm high, and flings the coronet with such exertion so that he releases a half-stifled cry and nearly tumbles into the water himself; he does not know where it slips under the waves, how his blood spirals away in ribbons of bronze on black on blood on blue. 

His hair is matted with brine, and he cannot tell if the wetness upon his face is of brine or of anguish. “Stay away,” he begs, broken in the mode of a jug shattered and remade, ground to dust and reformed, diminished by conversion, fragmented in memory. “I could not bear your tragedy upon mine own.” 

The last he whimpers, bowed upon his knees on the stone at the uttermost point from the calm sands of the village. “I could not.”

“I could not.”

“I could not.”

There is no response, save for the murmur, indistinct, of the waves which lap at his white-knuckled hands, which lick and caress and strip more agony from his self-inflicted wounds.

When he at last garners the strength to stagger back home, Thor sees another figure crouched by the water—he ducks behind the half-finished planking of a boat and observes, his torn palms wrapped in the hem of his shirt; as he waits, the low strains of song waver through the air and flutter, feebly, against his heart—the figure belongs to that of his mother.

Her shift is soaked to the knee, and she trembles with weariness; yet, in her hand, she clutches three loops of hair—Thor does not need to see in order to know to whom they belong, from which three heads they were cut, from which three children who once sat upon rickety stools by the hearthfire, from a time long gone and near forgotten. 

A golden lock she presses to her heart, while she dips the two others thrice into the water, warbling her maternal love all the while; one, two, three, wheat, chestnut, ebony. 

“Take heart, my darlings, take heart, from your fears, take heart, from your grievances, and let it not depart…”

“…Take heart, my darlings, take heart, for your own, take heart, and know that I, know not where you have flown,” Thor sings along, softly. “Take heart, for it is all you have of me, of my love, of my memory, of the love you bear as a cloak, light as smoke…”

“..Take heart, it is scarce where you have gone, so cold and dark and far from me, far from where you belong…”

Her grief pools, tangible in its scope, about her neck, where she tenderly tucks the hair away in an embroidered pouch, which hangs upon a thick, braided cord. It is only after the moonlight flickers off of the braid does Thor realize that each strip of leather has been dyed with very particular pigments—three twisted colors, entwined in reminiscence and bereavement.

Frigga stumbles back to the spacious longhouse that she shares, alone, with Odin; her own hair is pinned tight out of habit, but her steps remain unsteady and fragile—only after she shuts the door behind her does Thor seek out his bed along the uneven pebbles at the water’s edge.

For this night, Thor curls upon his side and makes a nest for himself in the rounded fragments of marble and quartz and granite; such suffering he deems appropriate, and pillows his head upon his arm—perhaps through this misery, his mother shall be spared her part, if but for a scant moment.

Lying like so, shivering and numb, Thor blinks at the vespertine canopy above out of the corner of his fading vision, the impenetrable fabric rotted through by some voracious moth; beaten free of dust and held up to the sun to reveal the trail of devoured felt, the heavy drape is opaquely atramentous, harsh light burning new perforations into the cloth until it smolders away into the tormented oblivion of slumber.

He dreams of teeth, of navy corundum wings, fluked and ribbed; they beat, languid, as furrowed jaws cut through sheets of skin and flesh and bone, until the moth passes through his body and emerges from the other side, florid with lifeblood and libidinously beautiful with resplendent abomination.

>>>

The next morning, Thor remembers, vaguely, that he had awoken in the night to the incoming tide stroking at his face and hair—he had stared, groggily, at the water tugging at his cloak, before rolling further away and settling to sleep once more.

He thinks not of the crimson sea-frond crown he’d found ensnarled in his hair above his brow, of the patterns of rime along the fabric over his chest and waist and hip, of the purpled, ice-swollen thickness of his lips. 

Thor thinks not of woe.

>>>

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, lovelies. 
> 
> Drop a note, would be much appreciated.
> 
> I have made a sworn promise, in blood, that this fic will be fucking completed, even if it kills me.  
> But then again, that's what love does to you, doesn't it? It kills, so sweetly that you weep tears of pleasure at your own anguish.


End file.
